Wiggo = Armstrong. Sadly, cycling is really no more of a major sport in the UK than it is in the US. Essentially, since the success of their Olympic team in 2008 and now, with Cav, Wiggo, Team Sky, and the 2012 Olympics, cycling has gotten a huge boost, but that may not be more than a short term gain for cycling. Soccer, rugby, tennis, motorsports, golf, cricket, or even boxing & darts may have bigger audiences, participation, and hardcore fans.

I hope the recent boost is sustainable. I'd be interested in some hard numbers for the long term impact Armstrong (or Lemond before him) had on US cycling. Similarly, the UK has had guys like Sean Yates and Tom Simpson who may have boosted cycling's status in past years. It would be interesting to see how sustainable those boosts were.

Tom

We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to set foot in it. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope... - Edward Abbey

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I dunno, the Sky drug enforcement policy is pretty draconian too. Guys who admitted and came clean for doping from years ago are all getting dumped.

If you look at it, Sky (or British Cycling in general) is parallelling the US Postal team's rise. Heavily funded, backed somewhat by part of the government. If anything, Sky is an even bigger "machine" than we had in the Lance days.

If/when Wiggo pops a positive, you can bet it'll be every bit as big a shnit-storm as it was here with Lance....especially now that he's been knighted.

We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to set foot in it. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope... - Edward Abbey

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

...not to mention that WADA and USADA have a primary goal of stopping doping in sports. Part of that means that hundreds of no-name, financially challenged, nobody atheletes will get busted.

Unfortunately, when a shot putter from Idaho gets slammed, it barely makes the local paper. So part of WADA/USADA's job is to make sure that they follow up on the big names too. If they really want to effect change, they need to send a clear message that nobody's to big to get nailed.

Finally, it's soooo easy to forget that USADA had pretty much dropped the case until the Feds started looking into Postal's possible use of funds to buy drugs. So blame Nowitsky and the Department of Justice if you want, not USADA. Or better yet, blame Floyd Landis for filing a whistle blower case against Lance that got the Feds interested in the first place.

As much as the "witch hunt" crowd wants to deny it, there's a pretty solid progression of what happened here that actually STARTED with the atheletes themeselves.

Maybe professional cycling is beyond hope as it seems every discussion comes back to doping no matter what the subject.Off Subject - I just wonder what kind of Cycling coverage we'll get on NBC Sports this year.

This is why you're gonna see Brad do a graceful exit from any hopes at next year's TDF. He's likely to have learned Lance's lesson, as will have most of the peloton, so you're gonna see some guys duck out of their honorable duty to win everything.